NEW YORK  A Colombian described by the U.S. government as one of the world's biggest drug lords was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison for directing an organization that shipped tons of cocaine into the United States.

Manuel Felipe Salazar-Espinosa was "a very big fish" who smuggled tons of cocaine into the U.S. and laundered tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan said. Salazar-Espinosa was ordered to forfeit $50 million.

Salazar-Espinosa, 58, could have faced life in prison, Kaplan said, but U.S. prosecutors honored Colombia's request not to seek the maximum sentence. Prosecutors requested a term of 40 to 60 years.

The judge said it was difficult to sympathize with Salazar-Espinosa, who was raised in an upper-middle-class family, attended college and then chose drug dealing as "an economic proposition, a way to make even more money, vast amounts of money."

Salazar-Espinosa was convicted last year of drug importation conspiracy, cocaine distribution and money laundering conspiracy charges.

At his trial, Salazar-Espinosa admitted through his lawyer that he was a drug dealer but said there was no evidence that the drugs were meant to go to the United States. Before he was sentenced, Salazar-Espinosa was defiant, asking "for what is fair" and reiterating his claim he hadn't broken U.S. laws.

Salazar-Espinosa was arrested in May 2005 after he helped hide 1.3 tons of cocaine in the arm of a crane being shipped from Panama to Mexico. Authorities said they found the drugs in about 1,300 bags in the crane in a warehouse outside Panama City two months after his arrest.

Prosecutors said much of the 5,000 kilograms -- or 11,000 pounds -- of cocaine that they believed Salazar-Espinosa shipped from Colombia to the U.S. ended up in New York. The drugs were worth more than $100 million, they said.

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